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[indent][sub][COLOR=slategray][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [color=lightgray][I]Capitol City[/I] – [I]United States[/I][/color][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=slategray][b]Issue #0.01:[/b][/COLOR] [I][color=lightgray]The Sentinel[/color][/I][/right][/sup][/indent]
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Capitol City never truly slept. Its skyline was a lattice of glass and steel, a network of towers and arterial roads that pulsed with late-night traffic, neon advertisements, and the unseen movements of men and women who preferred the cover of darkness. In the midst of this restless heartbeat stood Alan Scott, high atop the unfinished frame of a skyscraper his firm had designed. To the world, he was the architect—an aging visionary whose name carried weight in civic halls and boardrooms. Yet to himself, he was something far older, something no title or contract could define. He was the Sentinel.

The power within him stirred, a living force older than the city, older than the stars themselves. The [i]Starheart[/i]. It was not forged by science or Corps—it was a remnant of primal creation, fragments of wild magic bound by fearful hands and exiled into the void. The Guardians had sought to bury it, to erase its danger, but in doing so they created something neither tame nor truly contained. Alan had not found it—it had found him.

When the green fire filled him, it was never silent. It whispered, argued, and sometimes roared in his veins like a storm caged beneath the skin. Tonight, its voice was sharper than usual, edged with something Alan had not felt in years: unease. The city sprawled beneath him, its lights glimmering like scattered constellations, but the emerald flame licked at his heart with restless insistence.

[i][color=00583C]“You feel it too.”[/color][/i] Alan thought, his mind brushing against the entity that had become both his burden and his companion. The Starheart’s reply was not words but sensation—an accelerating pulse, a quickening current that bled into his own thoughts. He clenched the steel beam beneath his hands, the green glow flickering faintly across his skin, casting long shadows against the night.

The Sentinel knew this rhythm. He had stood against invasions heralded by such tremors, watched kingdoms fall when the flame inside him beat in warning. The fire was never wrong. He could feel the balance of things bending, twisting toward shadow. The last time he had ignored this whisper, the world had paid dearly for it.

Yet, there was something different in its cadence tonight. Not merely a warning of darkness ahead, but a memory resurfacing—a wound that had never healed. He felt the ghost of betrayal, of choices made in fire and ash, of a man who once stood beside him but had been lost to it. The name lingered at the edge of consciousness, as though the Starheart itself was pressing him to remember.

Alan Scott exhaled, the night air cold against his lungs. His emerald light flickered once more, then receded, leaving him in shadow save for the faint afterglow in his eyes. Capitol City stretched endlessly below him, unaware of the weight shifting in its skies.

Something was coming. The Starheart would not say what. But Alan knew enough to trust the foreboding it carried. He tightened his coat against the wind, casting one last glance at the horizon before stepping down from the steel frame. The Sentinel had endured long decades, but he could not shake the sense that the fire within him was not only warning him—it was preparing him.
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